BLOOD AND ASHES

THE CROW’S STITCH

The walls pressed in like a coffin.

Tobias sat on the hard wooden bench outside the interrogation room, his wrists cuffed raw, his eyes were fixed on the white scarf in his lap. Elena’s scarf. The one she wore that night on the rooftop before her body was stolen from the street below.

His thumbs traced the black crow stitched at its corner, over and over, as though stroking it might summon her voice. Then—his nail caught on something hard beneath the thread. A tiny nub.

Tobias stilled. He glanced up. The corridor was empty except for a rookie officer leaning half-asleep against the far wall.

Quietly, he bent his head and slipped the scarf into his lap. He had palmed a paperclip earlier from a tray of forms. Now he straightened it with a twist of his cuffed fingers. The metal was crude, but it worked. Slowly, carefully, he worked the tip into the stitching.

The crow’s eye came loose. And then, with a soft pop, something slid out.

A fingernail-sized micro-SD card, black as night.

For a moment Tobias’s lungs froze. Elena. Always one step ahead, even in death.

And tucked beside it—a folded slip of paper. Inside the paper was a shaky, hurried handwriting scrawled across it:

“If cornered, call El Pedro. Say: Saint Lucia.”

Tobias’s pulse thundered. El Pedro—the iron-fisted CEO of the loan company that had strangled him with debt when Elena was sick. The same company whose collectors now circled like vultures. Why would she point him there?

The rookie coughed. Tobias slid the SD card into his palm, rose stiffly, and muttered: “Restroom. I have to use the restroom.”

They let him go.

The restroom light buzzed, flickering against cracked tiles. Alone, Tobias perched on the toilet lid, tugged his phone from his pocket. A cheap Android, its screen spiderwebbed with scratches. But it had one trick: a hybrid SIM tray.

He used the paperclip again, popped it open, slid the micro-SD in. The phone vibrated. “SD Card detected.”

Four folders blinked on the screen:

/docs/ledger.p*f

/data/routes.csv

/images/DORADA/

/notes/note.txt

Tobias opened the ledger first. Pages of transactions rolled across the screen—columns of dates, accounts, and names. One kept reappearing: Castillo Foundation. Another: A. Alvarez. The numbers were enormous, millions funnelled like water into sand.

His throat tightened. This wasn’t bookkeeping. This was laundering. Proof.

Tobias scrolled further, his eyes narrowing. It wasn’t just numbers. It was a pattern.

Some loans were real — people like Tobias got cash but with crushing interest.

Others were phantoms — on paper only. Borrowers were told “funds pending,” but upfront processing fees were taken and collateral seized.

The money was split. Part of it moved to hospital accounts, but within two days it was funneled back under fake names through the Castillo Foundation. From there, it was divided again and landed in one private account: A. Alvarez.

The same dollars moved in circles, like clothes spun in a washing machine, coming out looking clean.

Tobias’s chest burned. Families bled while El Pedro grew fat.

He remembered one mother in Ciudad de Sanvelis who begged for insulin for her son. She paid every “processing f*e” they demanded and still ended up homeless.

Another family buried their father when the hospital supplies never came. The aid money had vanished back into Castillo’s books.

This wasn’t charity. It wasn’t business. It was blood disguised as paperwork.

Next he opened the images folder. Only one photo. IMG_0012_Dorada.jpg. A grainy shot from what looked like a gala. A graying man stood with his head half-turned, a heavy key-shaped pendant hanging from his neck. At the bottom, the metadata tag read: Villa Dorada.

Tobias’s fingers trembled. A man wearing the key. A city tied to wealth. Elena had known.

He opened the note last. Some words glared up at him:

“The key is worn, not kept. It is tied to great wealth, all yours.”

Tobias couldn’t make sense of that. He didn’t bother. His wife was missing, his boy was fighting for breath, and now—he had stumbled on El Pedro’s rotten core.

But Tobias knew better. El Pedro was only another vulture, feeding on the poor through his loans. The true killer, the man who must have caused Elena’s death, was someone more powerful and more dangerous.

His chest constricted. He closed the phone, slid it deep into his pocket, and returned to the corridor with fire burning in his veins.

Two men blocked his path. Dark jackets. Greasy hair. Phones raised. They were the debt collectors.

“Tobias Sheldon,” one said loudly, drawing the nurses’ attention. “Where’s our money? Or do we unplug your boy’s tank and watch him choke?”

Snickers. A phone camera zoomed in. “Smile for the crowd, incompetent schoolmaster.”

Another sneered. “Famous butcher of the gang wars, reduced to begging. Pay up, mule.”

Whispers stirred. Someone muttered, “Record this.”

Tobias stopped. He let the insults slide across him like rain. Then he stepped forward, his voice was low but steady—loud enough for every phone in the hall to catch:

“Tell your boss, El Pedro, that I know the account he launders through the Castillo Foundation. If you press me again, or make any attempt to humiliate me again, I’ll hand the ledger to every parent in this hall—and to the police. You’ll be the ones explaining where the money went.”

He leaned closer, his voice was sharper:

“And when the parents ask why their children’s hospital beds were empty while the money went missing, you’ll be the ones answering. Everyone in this city knows at least one family has been crushed by El Pedro’s tricks.”

The corridor fell still. The laughter died. One collector’s thumb froze over his phone before he quickly locked the screen. The other swallowed hard, his eyes flicking to the nurses watching from the side.

They understood what Tobias was talking about, and they didn’t want him to expose them in front of everyone.

“Ledger?” a voice whispered. “Castillo Foundation?”

The predators shrank back, their bravado evaporating. They slipped away without another word, leaving silence in their wake.

Tobias straightened his shoulders. I don’t need fists. I have proof.

For the first time in weeks, he felt the weight shift.

With that, he knew that he had El Pedro in his pocket, however since he wasn't El Pedro's victim, that only mattered little now.

Inside the interrogation room, the detective leaned back in his chair, studying Tobias with wary eyes. “Funny thing. Those debt men left with their tails tucked. You scare them with a look?”

Tobias met his gaze. “Not a look. The truth.”

"What truth is that?" The detective asked.

"It is not important." Tobias answered flatly.

The detective’s eyes narrowed. He looked squarely at Tobias for a few seconds. "Okay, whatever you say.

Hours later, Tobias sat alone in the holding corridor, cuffs biting his wrists, the scarf folded neatly beside him. He slid his phone open one last time.

The gala photo filled the screen. That half-turned stranger. That key-shaped pendant. The metadata stamped Villa Dorada.

His throat tightened. The money exists. The map exists. But the door won’t open without the man who wears the key.

He tucked the SD back into his shoe, rose as the guards called his name, and whispered under his breath:

“It seems like Elena knows something I don’t.”

Somewhere in Villa Dorada, a stranger wore Tobias’s future around his neck.